It’s not unusual to see Hudson’s mania portrayed as a beautiful love story, but that obscures the undercurrents of male dominance that so clearly mark the face of his poetry. At the outset of the Spring 2018 semester at Freedman’s University, Dr. Reginald Chambers told his English 101 classes that he would tell them a love story more tragic than Romeo & Juliet. His story began with Gertrude’s letter requesting to study with Hudson and it continued with Hudson’s attraction, with Gertrude’s rebuff, and ended with Hudson dashing himself into the Cross River. “He’s still there if you care to look” (Chambers, class lecture) were the final words to the story. Students hung from the words Dr. Chambers spoke, transfixed by the passion of the storyteller. I came to understand that the real tragedy wasn’t Hudson’s death, but the snuffing of Gertrude’s light. She refused to love him, so he refused to acknowledge her as a poet. Not only did he refuse to advise her on technique and to help her become published, he actively worked to destroy her every literary opportunity. He used his power to advise journals and publishers to not publish her. He pressured other potential mentors not to read her work. He showed up at her home, her place of work, at Cross Riverian literary salons where she found community away from her estranged family (now outed as black because of Gertrude’s actions). The world became unsafe for Gertrude. At last, Hudson stole her poetry; all her remaining words are thought to be buried with his bones beneath the waters of the Cross River. Dr. Chambers conveniently left that out of his “love” story. One day I hope to resurrect Gertrude’s words. As Zambreno says of her literary Heroines: “I feel compelled to act as the literary executor of the dead and erased. I’m responsible for guarding their legacy” (110). But why did Hudson act this way? As Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes in her book-length essay, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, “We teach girls to be likeable [sic], to be nice, to be false . . . This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this” (37). To dwell on Gertrude’s “niceness” however is to lay the blame for her harassment and Hudson’s death (and her own social death) at her feet, rather than at Hudson’s where it belongs. Many misogynists have and continue to blame Gertrude. We will not continue that practice in this essay. As bell hooks writes in her essay “Challenging Sexism in Black Life,” “. . . [T]he lives of black men are threatened by their uncritical absorption and participation in patriarchy” (hooks 63). Hudson’s allegiance to sexism literally destroyed him, caused him to leap into a river seeking love in its depths. The question one naturally asks is why did this all come about? The answer to why is that it is a timeworn pattern. “. . . [A]lmost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub-oppressors” (Friere 45). Or more colloquially, as the rapper L’Ouverture crudely puts it, “Even niggas eventually need they own niggers” (L’Ouverture). In other words, the oppressed—Hudson, being a black man in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s—found someone to oppress. Being weak and isolated and alone, enacting his power as a man, as a literary star, was the only way for Hudson to assert his humanity in a society that continuously denied his humanity. For Hudson, even bad humanity is better than the no-humanity he was forced to accept as a black man. This is very similar to Dr. Chambers standing before his students, shouting them down for disagreeing, and attempting to silence his own loneliness by transforming into a tyrant in his personal life.
One of the more dangerous and under-discussed aspects of loneliness is that it often causes its victims to enact a kind of personal tyranny, dominating all around them as a failed and misguided way to dominate loneliness. This description of oppressed peasant as oppressor found in Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (from an interview with a peasant) could double as a description of Dr. Chambers:
The peasant is a dependent . . . Before he discovers his dependence, he suffers. He lets off steam at home, where he shouts at his children, beats them, and despairs. He complains about his wife and thinks everything is dreadful . . . (65)
This localized and personal tyranny is Kin to the larger macro-societal tyranny that most countries eventually find themselves facing down like Samson with a donkey’s jawbone facing down the Philistines. In both, common loneliness plays a key developing role. As noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism: “It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other and that, therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about” (Arendt 474). It would be simplistic to cite loneliness as the primary motivating factor behind the Mugabes, the Dutertes, the Putins, the Erdogans, the Trumps, but as a motivator of low-level human tyranny—the petty bureaucrats at the MVA, the loan officer in the Freedman’s University administration building—loneliness is unparalleled as a primary motivator. In Pedagogy, Freire warns that teachers should avoid replicating oppressive structures in the design and running of their courses to avoid even implicitly teaching students to accept those oppressive structures within their societies and lives. Dr. Chambers likely conceived his course, English 101: Special Topics: Loneliness, with such radically egalitarian principles in mind, but the professor’s devolution to petty despotism was swift. The professor picked as his target in one section a large queer** football player with intimidating looks, but the heart of a (particularly soft) poet. “Dr. Chambers,” the football player said in an early class. “How about we think of other sources besides loneliness as the, um, core of our problems?” Dr. Chambers replied with a sneer and a mean chuckle: “Hey, how about you be quiet.” At first, students were taken aback, but if we look at this moment through the lens of tyranny, it becomes clear that Dr. Chambers used these sorts of mean quips to solidify his power. The professor presents himself as our knowledgeable expert—each class a meeting of Zeus and the (far) lesser gods. In fact, Dr. Chambers is impressively studied and, at times, his analysis (when he cares to be analytical) is unparalleled. But he is far too invested in what Freire called the “banking model” of teaching, viewing his students as empty vessels to pour knowledge into.
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry (72).
This sort of teaching creates a hierarchy with Dr. Chambers at the pinnacle and various students on differing levels depending on the whims of our tyrannical God-Professor. Though I was frequently singled out as an intellectual exception, like most students, I left class feeling disempowered. Disempowerment is the most important tool in the tyrant’s toolbox. It reduces the risk of rebellion. The disempowered don’t unite and rise up. While Dr. Chambers perfected his disempowerment and tyranny on his students, its roots go far beyond his Spring 2018 classes. In a PowerPoint presentation, the professor introduces students to his family life, specifically his wife, Christine. Chambers tells us she regards him as a Superman and her love and admiration creates within him a powerful loneliness that in turn has created a gulf between them, and thus, more loneliness (Chambers, “Loneliness vs. Solitude”.) While it is difficult to get a read on a marriage one is not a part of, Dr. Chambers invites us in and what he shows is not flattering towards himself. First of all, Dr. Chambers is not being forced at gunpoint to be part of a marriage that is purportedly causing him more loneliness than happiness. He seems to have forgotten the old African-American saying: “I can be lonely all by myself.” Most importantly, however, it is not entirely convincing that Dr. Chambers is experiencing the misery he claims to be experiencing. Dr. Chambers wields loneliness like an Israeli soldier wields a bulldozer, crushing his wife and children, keeping them in perfect subjugation. The professor claims to want the eradication of loneliness, but he knows this is not a realistic goal; it’s not even a desirable on
e for him. Loneliness is the source of his power, self-destructive and dubious as it may be, but still the only power he has.
Part of the stated goal of Dr. Chambers’s Spring 2018 English 101 course is to figure out “how to make the hurting stop” (Chambers, course syllabus). And it is the goal of the course that is a problem. To hurt, to be lonely, is to be human. To want to eradicate the ache of loneliness is also human; to succeed is impossible and ultimately undesirable. As Arendt notes, “. . . [L]oneliness is at the same time contrary to the basic requirements of the human condition and one of the fundamental requirements of every human life” (Arendt 475). Like any good tyrant, Dr. Chambers promises something he knows he cannot deliver. For Roland Hudson, the only way to end the pains of his heart was to end his life. As he states in Firewater: “The only method / . . . / To stop / The heart from hurting / Is to stop the heart” (36). I wish for Dr. Chambers a much happier ending. Something different than Hitler in the bunker. Managing loneliness, which is often as much a physical ailment as it is a mental one, is a far more realistic goal than completely ending it. While college is specifically built for intellectual explorations, it is a bit ambitious to think that six courses of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds can effectively end a persistent human problem. For one, we are very young, and reluctantly I admit, thoroughly lacking in life experiences. But even if Dr. Chambers had assembled the finest minds of all time, the outcome would have been the same.
Many of my peers, and even my faculty mentors, warned me against writing this essay in such a blunt style. After all, the primary target of my criticism (aside from the misogynist Roland Hudson) is the very person grading this essay. In the course syllabus and in the early classes, Dr. Chambers teaches that radical honesty is the fulcrum of our exploration into common loneliness. That is one thing the professor and I can agree on. The truth is that the poet Roland Hudson was a sexist who destroyed the life and career of a woman and I cannot celebrate that; wallowing in loneliness and isolation—making a God of it—turns one into a tyrant and over the course of a semester we’ve watched Dr. Reginald Chambers succumb to his own tyranny; and, lastly, I don’t wish to end my loneliness, I wish to learn from it, to grow from it so I can enjoy the inevitable and brief moments of oneness that are on the other side of isolation. I wish that for myself, but more importantly, I wish that for the reader.
Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. Print.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, NY, London, Harcourt Brace, 1994. Print.
Chambers, Reginald. English 101.15, Special Topics: Loneliness Course Syllabus. Spring 2018. Department of English & Cultural Studies, Freedman’s University, Cross River, MD. Print.
Chambers, Reginald. English 101.15, Special Topics: Loneliness.30 January 2018. Freedman’s University. Cross River, MD. Class lecture.
Chambers, Reginald. “Loneliness vs. Solitude: A Presentation by Dr. Reginald Chambers.” 1 February 2018. Freedman’s University. Cross River, MD. Class lecture.
Channing, Heather. Bubbling Up from the Bottom: A Guide to the Real Mythical Creatures From the Waters of America. 1972. Alzada Co., MS. Jamey House. Print.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, Continuum,2000. Print.
hooks, bell. “Challenging Sexism in Black Life.” Killing Rage: Ending Racism, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1995. Print.
Hudson, Roland. The Firewater of Love: Poems. Cross River, MD: Peckerman House. 2010. Print.
L’Ouverture & Problem with Authority. “Nat Turners With Burners.” The Haitian Revolution. Black Monolith/Meratti Records, 2005.
Rampersad, Arnold. Roland Hudson: A Life. New York: Vintage. 2016. Print.
Zambreno, Kate. Heroines. Los Angeles. Semiotext(e). 2012.
14.
To: Dr. Reginald S. Chambers, Assistant Professor—Department of English and Cultural Studies
Sent: May 5, 2018, 12:05 a.m.
From: Rebecca Montana
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: i don’t understand
this semester was supposed to be my redemption. i can sincerely say i don’t understand. i’ve never worked so hard at a class. never been so in love with the material and all i’m learning. i spent so much of my first semester laying on my back in my dorm room staring at the ceiling. so many times i thought i was actually floating. i think you’d call it advanced dislocation. when you’re in that state you have no use for class, no use for anything really. except despair. you feed on that. it’s your only nourishment. have you ever had a 0.00? you’re in a special club when you bring home those kind of numbers. i wasn’t the first student nor will i be the last to dance through those zeroes to be those zeroes but every student arrives at 0.00 in his or her own special way. i know i’ll never graduate with honors like my brothers. 0.00 grabbed me and smacked me set me down a road called academic probation. with an f in your class i won’t be able to continue at this university. i just don’t understand. i lived practically at the library these last several weeks. i thought my research was impeccable. i showed it to everyone, dr.chambers, everyone. the wholeworld gave me feedback. dr samson read it. his assistant read it and read it again and then re-read it. everyone said my essay was a high b at least. what happened? did they lie to me? to see an f on my paper broke me. i’m back to laying on my bed back to staring at the ceiling. is this what you wanted? was this all a game a trick to help us experience true loneliness? if so congratulations you have been successful. i know you’re hurting dr chambers. perhaps you’re too broken for all this. maybe we all are but i thought i was putting myself back together. i hope ur loneliness hasn’t completely given way to coldness to isolation to cruelty. i hope u can do something to help me. here i am being selfish. theres eddie losing his football scholarship. my roommate losing her housing allowance. our entire class is wailing. students i’ve met from your other classes are gnashing their teeth. did u pass even one of us? i imagine us: a harmony of nightscreams/ twisted screeching birdsong/ beloveds without lovers. here we all are ironically together. i have nothing else to say. i have no intention of getting on that plane and heading back west. i’ve found my place here. please don’t take this from me.
15.
You’ll have to forgive me for what I did next. Chambers stood so close to the edge, but I determined that he could never, would never, jump. He just didn’t have it in him. So while everyone wound down their semester or prepared for Ulysses Sparks to arrive on campus, I retired to the morgue. I stared at my boxy computer for so long that the blue glow of the screen turned me into blue glow. I melted into the screen, an apparition. I played around in Chet the dimwit’s email for a while. Then I took a deep breath. It was time to do what I came to do. I logged out of Chet’s email and typed in Chambers’s login in the username box. In the password box, I typed some letters that turned into an array of dark circles. When that didn’t work, I did it again. And again. And again. I found myself blocked for fifteen minutes. Then thirty. Then an hour. It was fine. I tend to play the long game. All they were doing was giving me time to think. It was night now and I stepped outside; above me shone lights so bright and intrusive it felt as if my eyes had been penetrated by brilliance. The burn of the light jabbed into me, passing as liquid into my nasal passages and my throat, shining out my mouth. Above me the natural sky became victim of the light, forced to cover its beauty in a mask of ugly illumination. I walked the campus making lists of possible passwords and all around me beamed pictures of Sparks’s face, signs bearing his website name and his ugly catchphrases. Men constructed a makeshift stage in front of the library, an altar to ignorance. All signs that the circus would arrive the next day. I didn’t know what to think so I thought only of passwords as I walked back to my morgue home. When I arrived, I sat in a corner runni
ng through my mental list of letters and numbers and symbols, keys to a brilliant future. The room spun around me, a world in motion, and in the ceiling I saw stars backed by stars backed by clouds of stars. Deep space. Nebulae. rolandhudson1 didn’t work. Nor did blacker.roland.hudson.1. But thefirewateroflove.1 did. This was early, early in the morning after I had worked for several hours. I watched all the emails, most unopened and unread. Students crying out in pain. Ephemera. Junk. hatemyprofessor ads. Colleagues expressing concern. I existed now to ease everyone’s suffering. I breathed deeply, put my fingers to the keyboard, and I let them dance, the spirit of constructive chaos passing through me like bolts of electric hate. It possessed me. Liber est gladio. I smiled.
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